VIOLENCE FOLLOWS DRUG CARTELS

TUCSON, Ariz. - Sgt. David Azuelo stepped gingerly over the specks of
blood on the floor, took note of the bullet hole through the bedroom
skylight, raised an eyebrow at the lack of furniture in the
ranch-style house and turned to his squad of detectives investigating
one of the latest home invasions in this Arizona city.

A 21-year-old man had been pistol-whipped throughout the house, the
gun discharging at one point, as the attackers demanded money, the
victim reported. His wife had been bathing their 3-month-old son when
the intruders arrived.

"At least they didn't put the gun in the baby's mouth like we've seen
before," Azuelo said. Later that afternoon, he was called to the scene
of another home invasion, one involving the abduction of a 14-year-old
boy.

This city, an hour's drive north of the Mexican border, is coping with
a wave of crime that the police say is tied to the bloody battles
between Mexico's drug cartels and the efforts to stamp them out.

Since officials here formed a special squad last year to deal with
home invasions, they have counted more than 200 of them, more than
three-quarters linked to the drug trade. In one case, the intruders
burst into the wrong house, shooting and injuring a woman watching
television on her couch. In another, in a nearby suburb, a man the
police described as a drug dealer was taken from his home at gunpoint
and is still missing.

Tucson is hardly alone in feeling the impact of Mexico's drug cartels.
In the past few years, the cartels and other drug-trafficking
organizations have extended their reach across the United States and
into Canada. Law enforcement authorities say they think that drug
traffickers distributing the cartels' marijuana, cocaine, heroin,
methamphetamine and other illicit narcotics are responsible for a rash
of shootings in Vancouver, British Columbia, kidnappings in Phoenix,
brutal assaults in Birmingham, Ala., and much more.

U.S. law enforcement officials have identified 230 cities, including
Atlanta, Boston, Billings, Mont., and Anchorage, Alaska, where Mexican
cartels and their affiliates "maintain drug distribution networks or
supply drugs to distributors," as a Justice Department report put it
in December. The figure rose from 100 cities reported three years
earlier, though Justice Department officials said that may be because
of better data collection methods as well as the spread of the
organizations.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has asked for National Guard troops at the
border. The Obama administration is completing plans to increase the
number of federal agents along the border, a senior White House
official said, but did not anticipate deploying soldiers.

The official said the enhanced security measures would include
increased use of equipment at the ports of entry to detect weapons
carried in cars crossing into Mexico from the United States, and more
collaboration with Mexican law enforcement officers to trace weapons
seized from crime scenes. Law enforcement officials on both sides of
the border agree that the United States is the source for most of the
guns used in the violent drug cartel war in Mexico.

"The key thing is to keep improving on our interdiction of the weapons
before they even get in there," Janet Napolitano, the secretary of
Homeland Security and the former governor of Arizona, said last week
in a meeting with reporters.

The violence in the United States does not compare with what is
happening in Mexico, where the cartels have been thriving for years.
Forbes recently listed one of Mexico's most notorious kingpins,
Joaquin Guzman, on its list of the world's billionaires.

But a crackdown begun more than two years ago by President Felipe
Calderon, coupled with feuds over turf and control of the
organizations, has set off an unprecedented wave of killings in
Mexico. More than 7,000 people, most of them connected to the drug
trade or law enforcement, have died since January 2008. Many of the
victims were tortured. Beheadings have become common.

At times, the police have been overwhelmed by the sheer firepower in
the hands of drug traffickers, who have armed themselves with assault
riffles and even rocket launchers smuggled in from the United States.

Although overall violent crime has dropped in several cities on or
near the border - Tucson is an exception, reporting a rise in
homicides and other serious crime last year - Arizona appears to be
bearing the brunt of smuggling-related violence because some 60
percent of illicit drugs found in the United States - principally
cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine - entered across Arizona's border.

Tying the street-level violence in the United States to the cartels is
difficult, law enforcement experts say, because the cartels typically
distribute their illicit goods through a murky network of regional and
local cells made up of Mexican immigrants and U.S. citizens who send
cash and guns to Mexico through an elaborate chain.

Elizabeth W. Kempshall, who is in charge of the Drug Enforcement
Administration's office in Phoenix, said the kind of open warfare in
some Mexican border towns - where soldiers patrol in masks so they
will not be recognized later - has not spilled over into the United
States in part because the cartels do not want to risk a response from
law enforcement here that would disrupt their business.

But Kempshall and other experts said the havoc on the Mexican side of
the border may be having an impact on the drug trade here,
contributing to "trafficker on trafficker" violence.